


Cat Vigilante

by GiuGiu



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Daddy Issues, Diego Hargreeves is Bad at Feelings, Diego Hargreeves-centric, F/M, Hero Complex, Pre-Canon, Protective Diego Hargreeves, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25209901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GiuGiu/pseuds/GiuGiu
Summary: He knows it’s getting out of hand when he’s actually approached for help.Diego’s in the middle of getting kicked out of a crime scene (“fucking hell, Diego, leave my evidence alone!”) when some kid strides right up to him.“You’re the c-cat guy, right?”Diego sputters and Dora snorts in amusement. “Cat guy?” he asks at the same time Dora says, “yeah, he’s the Cat Vigilante.”A year in the life of Diego Hargreeves, and his unintentional cat-related proclivities.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves/Eudora Patch
Comments: 34
Kudos: 159





	Cat Vigilante

**Author's Note:**

> Did I expect Diego to possibly get a new love interest in season 2? Nope. So here I am, finally getting my shit together and posting this Diego/Eudora fic before everyone moves on and ships him with someone else.  
> I wrote most of this while drinking a lot of shitty airplane coffee at 3am on my way home from spring break, peak coronavirus panic. Enjoy.

It starts as an accident. He’s walking home, letting his nosebleed run its course and the cool night air wash over his throbbing cheek. It’s going to bruise, and Dora is going to roll her eyes, but then she’ll smile and make him some coffee, and they’ll watch NCIS and snuggle.

Damn, he really needs some coffee.

He’s just turning the corner when he feels that familiar tingle on the back of his neck that means someone is following him. He stops and senses that whoever is behind him has stopped as well.

“Listen, asshole,” he starts, rolling his shoulders out. “I’m tired, so unless you want to end your night in a bodybag, I suggest you fuck off.” He whirls around, a knife hanging loosely from his hand, ready to fly.

But instead of some petty criminal or bored gangbanger, a pair of luminescent orange eyes glow up at him.

“Oh,” he says dumbly.

“Meow?” The white cat says, a questioning lilt in its tinny voice.

He slips the knife back into its sheath. The cat continues to stare up at him. Diego stares back awkwardly for a moment, then turns around and keeps walking. 

NCIS starts in twenty minutes and Dora won’t let him in bed until after he scrubs all the blood off. He doesn’t have time for some random cat.

Then a warm body pushes itself against his leg. “What the fuck!” He jumps and then immediately glances around to make sure no one saw. He has a reputation to uphold. Comforted by the resounding emptiness of the street, he turns his glare to the fluffy thing winding between his legs. “C’mon man,” the cat looks up at him. “Just go home.”

“Meow?”

“Yeah, _home_.” 

The cat walks a step ahead and Diego thinks for a second that the cat understood him. Then it flops onto the ground and rolls to show off a fuzzy white belly.

The part of Diego that always yearned for a pet -- a supportive, cuddly friend to confide in -- as a child, wants to slip his glove off and sink his fingers into the cat’s warm fur. But Diego had stopped listening to those instincts a long time ago. “No,” he tells the creature and walks past.

The cat runs ahead and sits to watch him approach. Diego crosses the street, it follows. Diego walks past a house with a barking dog, still, the cat follows. He walks through a park, over a bridge, past a family of raccoons, through a fountain. It just keeps trotting a step behind.

“Okay, fine.” Diego tells it. He crouches, yanks his glove off, and pets the damn thing once on the head before sliding the collar around to read the tag. “Mariposa,” he reads. The cat meows back. “1498 Jefferson Avenue.” 

Well, that’s only a five minute walk from here. “Fine,” he grumbles, to the cat or to the universe, he’s not sure. He scoops the thing into his arms, inwardly preening when it immediately starts to purr, and marches off to return the cat.

He knocks on the door of a small house with neat little rose bushes under the window facing the street. A man, maybe a few years older than Diego, opens the door hesitantly and Diego is reminded that it is night, he’s wearing dozens of knives and a mask, and his face is smeared with blood.

Then the man’s eyes fall to the cat (content and purring) in his arms. “Oh wow!” He grins at Diego. “You found her!” He turns away to shout into the house. “Ana, come look!”

A little girl in pink and purple butterfly pajamas appears and squeals with delight at the sight of her cat.

“Mariposa!” 

The cat squirms in Diego’s arms, eager to get down, so he awkwardly hands it over to the girl. He watches as she hugs the cat tight and the cat almost seems to hug back.

“Thanks for bringing her home,” the man says. “We were really worried about her.”

Diego smiles, then remembers he has blood in his teeth and immediately stops. “Uh, yeah. Sure. Have a nice night.”

He leaves quickly and tells himself it’s because he doesn’t want the cat to change her mind and follow him again.

He misses the first ten minutes of NCIS.

🐾

The second time is more purposeful. Kinda.

He’s driving around downtown with his police scanner on, waiting for something to happen. Anything. He’s absolutely thrumming with barely contained energy.

But the officers and dispatchers don’t report anything worse than some solicitation and drunkenness and he doesn’t drive by any unsavory back-alley crimes. 

He’s bored and restless and desperate for a release after his fight with Dora. He doesn’t know why he’s always a dick around her dad, but apparently implying that he’s a “paranoid bastard” is “inappropriate,” “disrespectful,” and a “dumbass move.” But what else would you call someone who has the nerve to tell Diego to leave his knives at the door? What does he think Diego is going to do? Stab him? Diego huffs and pulls over. He needs to walk and expel some energy before he punches his dashboard (again).

He parks by a greasy little diner, the windows are too fogged up to see through and Diego’s breaths come out the same way. It’s the part of the year where fall slides into winter with all the grace of a bull in a china shop.

He’s stepping out of the parking lot and onto the crumbling sidewalk when he spots it. A fat orange tabby is sitting a few parking spots away. He eyes it and it eyes him back. After a moment Diego just shrugs and keeps walking. Maybe he’ll stumble across a robbery if he’s lucky. 

He’s four blocks away from the diner when he sees the poster. It’s a drooping piece of printer paper, soggy from the morning’s rain, and taped up on a telephone pole. MISSING CAT it screams. There’s a picture too and -- “Oh goddamn it,” Diego mutters. It looks a lot like the fat orange cat he’d seen earlier.

GARFIELD. ORANGE TABBY. He rips the poster down. Well, it’s something to do at least. If his dad could see him now, The Kraken, a deadly crime fighting superhero, tracking down lost cats. His bitter laugh echoes around the empty city streets. 

“Well, Garfield,” he tells the picture of the cat. “Guess it’s your lucky day.”

Except it isn’t. Because when he trudges back to the diner the cat is gone. Diego sighs, of course it couldn’t just be easy. He checks under his car. Under the one other car in the parking lot. He goes into the diner to buy coffee and asks the tired waitress if she’s seen it (she hasn’t). He checks under the dumpster and then in the dumpster. And so it begins. His ungodly search of the neighborhood and all it’s sticky and icky nooks and crannies.

The sky is starting to dilute from black to purple and he knows the streetlights will soon turn off. He sits, defeated, on the sidewalk and pulls the crumbled poster out of his pocket. 

“Where the fuck did you go?” He asks it. His chaotic energy has left him and now all he wants to do is go home and apologize and beg Dora to let him back in.

“Meow.”

He straightens like he was electrocuted. But there’s nothing there. The street is just as empty as it’s been all night. “Meow.” And then an orange paw is patting at his boot. 

“Oh.” Diego feels like an idiot. He kneels down and peers into the storm drain. A glowing pair of eyes look back at him. “Hey, Garfield.” He reaches in but the cat recoils. “I’m trying to save you. C’mon.” He reaches in again but the cat bats at his hand and then moves deeper into the drain.

“Shit, no.” Diego lunges after it, sticking his arm shoulder-deep in. “It’s okay,” he shushes, trying to lure the cat back. His arm is getting wet from old rainwater sludge but it’s hardly the worst thing he’s gotten on him during his patrols.

“Damn, Diego,” a voice calls out. “You lose your keys or something?” Aw shit.

“Beaman,” Diego greets, trying to convey a nonchalance about the whole situation. “Hey man,” he keeps his arm in the drain and feels the cat hit his hand again. At least it’s still close. He nods to Beaman as he walks up to stand on the slab of sidewalk over the storm drain. 

“What’s going on?” 

“Oh, you know,” Diego says, torn between acting normal and staying focused on the task at hand. He’s pretty sure the cat is right next to his hand now. He pushes forward, ignoring the dull ache as his shoulder grinds against the concrete, and grabs at the fluffy thing now within his reach. “A little of this,” he grunts and tugs. A wet and disgruntled orange cat is dragged from the depths of the drain. “A little of that.” He holds the cat tight as it panics, thrashing in his arms.

Beaman stares at him for a second. Diego stares back. “Caught a cat burglar, huh?” 

Diego groans. “Please don’t tell Eudora.” 

🐾

Beaman tells Eudora. Diego knows that Dora knows because the next day he opens their closet and finds that all of his shirts are missing. And in their place is a god awful pink sweater that says _Cat Mom_ in cramped embroidery script. Fluffy cats of all shapes, sizes, and colors decorate the sweater. “Christ,” he mutters and shakes the sweater to watch the cats’ googly eyes roll. He wears Dora’s police academy hoodie instead.

🐾

Diego is determined to stay away from cats. He’s determinedly not investigating any scurrying creatures in the alley shadows. Live and let live, or whatever. He’s a vigilante not animal control.

That being said, he does glance over when he sees some movement under a dumpster. And well, he doesn’t want to be a cat wrangler but it is starting to snow and it would be shitty of him not to check. “Please be a raccoon,” he mutters as he approaches the dumpster. “Or a really big rat.”

He crouches down and peers under the dumpster.

And he wishes it was a cat. Because saving a cat would be a lot easier than saving the poor shivering creature he does find.

“Diego?” Klaus murmurs. “The fuck are you doing here?”

“Finding you, apparently.” Diego huffs. “What are _you_ doing down here, bro?”

Klaus slithers out from under his hiding place. “Hmm. I don’t totally recall.” Diego watches his brother turn and stare at the grungy alley wall. “Oh! Right. Es posible,” he starts and then stops to giggle. It’s too dark for Diego to see Klaus’ pupils but the way he’s slurring already tells him everything he needs to know. “That I’m a _smidge_ lost.” He tries to stand up but ends up slipping back down into some mystery puddle.

“Yeah?” Diego asks, placing a firm hand on his brother’s arm and pulling him up. “You got a place to stay?”

Klaus hums something nonreassuring, eyes flitting between Diego and the empty space beside him. Then suddenly he’s beaming. “Ooh. We’re close to Griddy’s! Buy me a donut?” He bats his eyelashes at Diego imploringly.

“I’ll buy you a burger. You need more protein.”

Klaus pouts but follows him out of the alley and around the block to the familiar diner.

Diego ends up buying him a cheeseburger _and_ an orange donut. As Klaus eats, Diego assesses him. He’s wearing purple crushed velvet leggings, a gray t-shirt with Jiminy Cricket on the front that asks _Who Needs a Conscience?,_ and a black lace cardigan. His eyeliner and purple lipstick are smudged and he’s barefoot.

“Drink.” Diego says, pushing the cup of water at his brother. Klaus wrinkles his nose at the water but takes a reluctant sip. “Where are you staying?” Diego asks and takes a sip of his coffee.

“Here and there,” Klaus drawls. “How’s the cop life treating you, dear brother?”

“I’m not doing that anymore.”

“No?” Klaus grins without any warmth. “Bum _mer._ ”

“If I take you to a shelter, would you stay there tonight?”

Klaus raises an eyebrow and shoves the last bite of his donut into his mouth.

“C’mon bro,” Diego pleads. He only sees Klaus once or twice a year but everytime they run into each other, Klaus somehow looks worse. And the snow is coming down steadily now, sticking to the sidewalk in clumps. 

“Thanks for the burger,” Klaus says even though he barely touched it. He stands to leave but Diego grabs his wrist. 

“Wait, hey,”

“Let go, Diego.” Klaus warns, and Diego can tell that his brother’s high is starting to wear off. Diego releases him but shucks off his coat and hands it over. 

“Take this.” Klaus looks at the coat like it’s going to bite him. “I swear to god if you don’t put this on I’ll fucking drag you to that shelter on 6th street.”

Klaus glares but shrugs the coat on, huffing indignantly as he does. He moves to leave. “Wait,” Diego asks again and bends to untie his laces. “Take these too.” He hands over his black combat boots. 

Klaus slips them on but then pointedly looks at Diego’s socks and then turns his eyes back to Diego.

“Don’t ask.”

“I didn’t know you liked cats.” Klaus murmurs, eyes alight. Diego hates the hot/cold mood swings Klaus can flit between when sobering up.

He awkwardly shuffles back into the booth to hide his yellow socks that have siamese cats and fish all over them. 

“Eudora hid my other socks.”

Klaus bends in half and laughs like a madman, catching the attention of the exhausted patrons and staff in the diner. “Oh, Diego.” He eventually says, wiping a tear away. “Oh, Diego.” Then he walks off without tying up the laces. Diego lets him go, his coffee turns to lead in his stomach.

🐾

The next time it happens, he’s a reluctant participant at best. 

There’s a few inches of snow covering the city but Diego is warmer than ever with his arm around Dora as they walk home from her sister’s birthday party. 

“You did a good job,” she tells him, rosy red cheeks glowing in the dim streetlights. She stumbles a little and Diego tightens his grip around her. “With my family. You did good.”

Diego takes a steadying breath to compose himself, trying to not show her how much that praise affected him. How much he craves her approval.

And a tipsy Dora gives lots of praise.

He stops to lean over and kiss her, deep and slow. He lets her push him just inside the little alley between a bakery and a travel agency. She pins him to the wall and kisses her way from his lips down to his neck. “I was good?” He asks, and lets his hands rest heavily on her hips.

“So good.” She breathes into his collarbone. “Such a good boy.” She mouths at the underside of his jaw and he lets his hands dip lower and lower.

“Meow.”

Diego ignores the sound and guides Dora’s lips back to his.

“Meow.”

“Did you hear that?” Dora asks, pulling away. He groans and tries to follow her lips but she pushes him back against the wall. 

“No.” Diego lies.

“Meow.”

“There it is again!” Eudora pulls away entirely and Diego sorely misses her warmth. He bitterly shoves his hands into his pockets (of the new coat he picked up from the thrift store) and looks around the dark alley.

He spots the cat almost immediately. It’s a bedraggled thing, long gray fur clumpy and wet. He points it out to Dora.

“Oh my god!” She squeals and approaches the cat. She holds her hand out to it eagerly.

“Wait, Eudora,” Diego starts to warn her, but before he can say anything the cat has pushed its face into her palm.

“Oh, who’s a good kitty?” She coos, and Diego wonders if maybe she drank more than he realized. He watches with jealousy as the cat gets rubbed and scratched in all the right places. It turns to smugly look at Diego.

What a dick.

“Di-e-go,” Dora sings while scratching the cat behind its ears. “He has a collar! Do your cat vigilante thing!”

“Cat vigilante thing?” Diego asks even though he already understands.

“Mhmm. And I can ride along with you!” She finally turns away from the cat to look at him, somehow she’s the brightest thing in the alley.

“A ride along, huh?” Diego laughs and scoops up the cat. It seems disappointed that he’s holding it and not Dora. Good.

🐾

Diego is not a cat vigilante. He’s not. But, if he checks all the missing cat posters during his patrols and keeps his eyes open, well, that’s just good citizenry. And yeah, maybe he’s returned around twelve cats so far. But that’s nothing. He’s sure plenty of people can say that.

🐾

It’s Christmas when Diego finds the kitten. He shouldn’t be out, Dora’s family was expecting him three hours ago but…

He _had_ gone. He had showed up to the Patch Residence. He had looked at the snowman in the front yard, the lights hanging with cheer. The red and green tinsel wreath on the front door.

And then he’d promptly dashed back to his car to have his panic attack in private.

So now he’s aimlessly wandering down the empty city streets, idly watching the snow spin down from the sky and stick to the icy pavement. “Christmas,” he says to himself, “ _Christmas_.”

It’s times like this when he really doesn’t know how to be a functional normal human being. He had never been trained for this.

 _Thanks, Dad. Thanks for making it easier to be alone than with my girlfriend on Christmas._ He kicks at some slush. And the slush hisses, because of fucking course it does.

He lets loose a long-suffering sigh and crouches down to examine his discovery. It’s a tiny thing, probably a kitten. He thinks it’s black, but it’s hard to tell with all the mucky snow covering it. 

He reaches down to pull it out of the freezing puddle it’s residing in. It hisses and swipes at him, leaving red lines down the side of his hand. “Shit!” He steps back and glares at the kitten. 

He grabs his leather gloves out of his pockets and slips them on. He picks the kitten up quickly, it writhes and bites and claws at him and he holds it away from his body like it’s a ticking bomb.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” He yells, his frustration bubbling up. “Knock it off! You want me to leave you alone out here?” The kitten yowls and sinks its teeth deeper into the glove. Diego rearranges his grip to hold the beast tightly by the scruff of its neck. It stops fighting but continues to growl, the tense little body refusing to give into the warmth surrounding it.

Diego hesitantly holds it to his chest and starts walking back to his car. 

“What’s wrong with you?” He asks grumpily sloshing through the snow. “Demon cat.”

The kitten snarls.

It doesn’t have a collar so Diego takes it home for now. It needs to warm up. He’ll check for wanted posters tomorrow. The second he puts the thing down it darts away to some unseen corner of the apartment. 

“You better not shit in my bed!” 

🐾

Dora doesn’t come home that night and Diego knows it’s because she’s pissed. He had stayed up most of the night waiting, dread weighing heavy in his bones. He fucked up, and he hates himself for it. He watches as their room goes from dark to dim to bright. When he forces himself to get out of bed in the morning he finds the kitten in the kitchen sink.

“Why?” He asks it. It hisses back. 

He makes two cups of coffee and feels pretty pathetic about it. When Dora doesn’t come back he ends up drinking both cups and feels even worse.

He puts a bowl of water and some deli meat in the sink. The kitten swipes at his hand again, leaving fresh marks. “You fucker, I’m trying to help you,” he grumbles and retreats to the other side of the room.

🐾

When Dora comes home around noon she isn’t angry. “I’m just disappointed,” she tells him again. “You promised you’d come. You were getting along with them last month. What changed?”

Diego shrugs. “Got busy,” he lies. He gestures to the kitchen sink. 

She walks over to peer down at the little demon. “Oh wow, what happened to it?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s all,” she gestures at her own face and arms, “messed up.” Diego leaps out of his chair and crosses the room in three strides. He looks at the kitten closely and notices, for the first time, that it’s missing chunks of fur all over its body.

How had he not seen that?

“Oh.”

“Do you think it was in a fight? Poor thing.” Dora reaches down to pet it and quickly gets the same scratch treatment Diego’s been getting. She hisses in pain and holds her fingers close. 

Diego gently guides Dora away from the sink. “Let’s leave it alone for now.”

🐾

They can’t find any posters about a missing black kitten. “It’s a stray,” Dora tells him. “The city is full of them.”

“So, what should we do with it?” He asks her, he can just see the tips of little black ears over the edge of the sink. He’s a grown man, but for some reason this situation makes him feel really small. Dora shrugs.

“I guess we can take it to the shelter or keep it. Either way, it needs to go to the vet first.”

Which is how Diego finds himself nervously clutching a brand new cat carrier in the veterinary waiting room. The kitten keeps yowling then it realizes it’s being ignored and will stop for a few minutes, before starting to yowl again. Diego can’t quite stop his leg from bouncing. “I know,” he whispers to the kitten. He hates doctors too.

The vet sedates the kitten with a sad smile. “This little guy has been through the wringer, huh?” She asks, examining his face and legs. Diego watches as she starts to clean the hairless patches to reveal wounds, some scabbed over, some still fresh. “He’s going to need a lot of TLC and patience.” Diego turns away when she reaches for her needles. 

He leaves with a clean, dozing kitten and a follow up appointment on his calendar. 

🐾

He never tells Dora he plans on keeping the cat. Somehow she just knows that’s the plan and brings home a bag of kitten food, a litter box, a pink cat bed, and a set of water and food bowls with cartoon mice on them.

“It’s a boy,” he tells her, eyeing the pink bed with a frown. 

“So?” She asks. “You like pink.” He opens his mouth to argue but stops when she gives him the Look that wordlessly reminds him that all their sex toys are, in fact, various shades of pink.

🐾

The kitten, who eventually is dubbed Sink as that is where he can be found 98% of the time, slowly adjusts to his new home. He owns the sink, so they wash their dishes in the bathroom like animals. But after a few weeks Sink’s fur grows back, black and thick, but in the light you can see the shiny scars marring his body. He stops scratching when Diego and Dora come close but still won’t let them touch him. And one day when Diego opens the door for his nightly patrol, Sink darts out.

“Hey!” Diego squawks in surprise. But just like that, Sink has melted into the darkness. Diego feels a strange ache in his chest.

🐾

He’s not a cat vigilante. But there is a week where he returns three tabby cats and a ragdoll, and turns in a box of abandoned kittens to the shelter. 

🐾

One day, Sink comes back. Diego is laying in the dumpster behind the sketchy Chinese restaurant (the one with the human traffickers in the basement and the illegal gambling ring in the apartment above), trying to determine whether his ribs are broken or just hurt a whole fucking lot from being pushed off the fire escape and falling two stories. 

The bad guys are definitely getting away but he hears some distant sirens so that’s promising. He’s legitimately thinking about sleeping in the dumpster for the night when something hisses at him. He groans, “please don’t be a raccoon.”

He turns his head slightly (ow) and spies a very familiar black kitten perched on the edge of the dumpster. “Oh, it’s you.”

Sink hisses again, then deftly walks over the black trash bags towards him. Diego resigns himself to losing a battle to this ungrateful beast and closes his eyes, ready to just let it happen. But the pain doesn’t come, instead a warm weight perches on his bicep. Sink is laying, curled up on his arm. Diego stares. Sink stares back. Then Diego passes out.

He wakes up on a stretcher. “Jesus Christ,” Dora is muttering, “you never learn.” There are red and blue lights casting eerie shadows around the alley and Diego can hear Beaman on the radio in the distance. Dora notices he’s awake and raises her voice. “One day I’m going to find you dead, Diego. Then what?” She’s pissed and Diego feels that familiar dread fill him up. He made her angry. The paramedics load him into the ambulance. He fucked up.

He realizes, with a start, that Sink is gone. “Hey, did you see a bl-” he starts to ask the paramedic. Then they stick an IV needle in him and he passes out again.

🐾

“A concussion, three broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, six stitches in your thigh and four stitches on your back.” Dora reads when she picks him up from the hospital. She glares at him, then leans in to kiss him hard. They go home and watch a Friends marathon.

🐾

Diego won’t let Dora put the cat bed away even though Sink never even used it when he did live there. “He’s around,” he tells her vaguely. She grumbles about him being a hoarder but he knows she wants to believe Sink will come back too.

🐾

It’s early spring when he happens to walk by Vanya. It’s a less than ideal situation. He has a siamese cat tightly clutched under one arm and a himalayan under the other. CASSANDRA and ROMEO their respective posters had identified them. Diego had to climb a fucking tree to get Cassandra and he’s pretty sure he has some twigs in his hair.

It’s also raining and he and his furry counterparts are getting steadily soaked.

Which is of course when Vanya appears, walking towards him on the sidewalk. “Diego?” She calls out when she sees him, he notices the way her knuckles turn white on the handle of her umbrella. 

He flounders. “Y-y-you shouldn’t be o-out this late.” He blurts. She blinks at him. He takes a steadying breath and tries again. “It’s d-dangerous.” 

“I’m not going far.” She looks at him and he’s always had a hard time reading her but he’s pretty sure she wants to be swallowed up by the sidewalk. Or maybe he’s projecting.

“I’ll walk you.” He says, because maybe he and Vanya don’t talk but he’s not about to let his sister walk alone at 1 am in this part of the city. There had been a sexual assault a couple blocks over last week. 

“Oh, you don’t have to,” she murmurs. “I wouldn’t want to... hold you up.” She gestures to the cats in his arms. He shifts awkwardly. 

“I’m going to walk you home.” He tells her loudly, she flinches and he feels a little guilty. But he’s trying to help her! Why is she fighting him on this? He turns and walks beside her and doesn’t comment when she holds the umbrella higher to somewhat cover him as well.

🐾

Sink somehow only appears when Diego is hurt. Like a guardian angel. Or a vulture. Sink showed up for the dumpster incident. He also came when Diego sprained his ankle in the parking garage. And when he trips and hits his head in the park fountain. Each time, Sink flits in, watches him, and then leaves.

It happens again as Diego is applying pressure to the bullet graze on his forearm. He’d stumbled home for some DIY first aid on the kitchen floor when he hears a soft pat pat pat on his window. He glances up, sighs, and lets Sink in. “How’d you get on the fourth floor?” Sink hisses and curls up in his namesake. “It’s too bad you never stick around.” Diego tells him. “Dora misses you.” Sink’s stoic expression doesn’t change.

“You grew.” Diego tells him, not without a little pride. “You eating plenty of protein?” He finishes taping a bandage to his wound and gets up to grab the leftover meatballs from the fridge. “Here,” he scoops two into Sink’s food bowl and pops another into his mouth. He cringes, “ew,” he should have washed his hands first. Sink doesn’t move but Diego didn’t really expect him to. They sit in the kitchen together until Diego falls asleep on the cold linoleum floor. When he wakes up Sink is gone, but so are the meatballs.

🐾

Spring is warming up when Diego decides that while he _is not a cat vigilante thank you very much,_ it would be beneficial to keep cat treats in one of his many hidden pockets. It just makes sense, given his… random… unplanned… cat-related proclivities.

🐾

Diego isn’t quite sure what he’s feeling. Pride? Anger? Fear? It’s probably all in there to be honest. It’s not every day that your cat (and he is a cat now, which blows Diego’s mind) struts through your window with a giant gash on his face and the smuggest expression Diego’s ever seen. And Diego grew up with Five, so that’s saying something.

“Fucking hell,” Dora groans when she sees him, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “He’s just like you.”

Diego beams. And then he and Dora rush Sink to the 24/7 emergency clinic because he’s losing a _ton_ of blood.

“Five stitches,” Dora grumbles at him like it’s his fault their weirdo cat got into a fight.

“Five stitches.” Diego agrees and stares down at the sedated fuzzy thing in his lap. He runs a gentle hand through Sink’s surprisingly soft fur, savoring the forbidden experience.

🐾

It goes like this.

First, Dora gives him a pamphlet. He reads it and then pretends he hasn’t read it when she asks.

Then, she brings it up as they sit in the movie theater. He shushes her.

Finally, she glares at him, hands on her hips, as he comes out of the shower.

“It has to be done.” Dora tells him in her no-nonsense way. 

“But-”

“No.” She insists.

“But-”

She raises an eyebrow. Diego sighs. “Fine. Ok.”

And so, the next time he sees Sink he traps him in the cat carrier and takes him to be neutered.

🐾

He knows it’s getting out of hand when he’s actually approached for help.

Diego’s in the middle of getting kicked out of a crime scene (“fucking hell, Diego, leave my evidence alone!”) when some kid strides right up to him.

“You’re the c-cat guy, right?” 

Diego sputters and Dora snorts in amusement. “Cat guy?” he asks at the same time Dora says, “yeah, he’s the Cat Vigilante.”

“Well,” the kid, probably about fifteen if Diego has to guess, says. He looks nervous and Diego feels out of place. He doesn’t like being around kids. And this one looks familiar with big green eyes and a black hoodie, it puts him on edge. He shifts back and forth on the balls of his feet and Dora side-eyes him. “I was hoping you could, um, h-help me.”

“Look,” Diego begins, ready to tell the kid he’s busy. They _are_ at the edge of a crime scene, the flashing lights and yellow tape should give the kid a hint. 

“He would love to help you.” Dora tells him. “In fact, he can go _right now_. Bye, Diego.” She gives him a little shove away from the caution tape and marches back over to where Beaman is questioning a witness.

Diego watches her go and takes a deep breath, he doesn’t want to yell at the kid. “What do you want?” he snaps instead.

The kid takes a step back and Diego feels like shit. “I l-lost my mom’s cat. If I don’t find her my dad’ll,” the kid stutters over a tricky consonant, and some dark, twisted part of Diego thinks _pathetic_. “K-k-k-k-kill me.”

Diego stops, stuck, and assesses the kid again. He’s pale, blond hair buzzed short, and blushing. There are dark circles under his eyes, _tired, he’s tired,_ Diego tells himself. _Or maybe the dark circles are from something else._ He’s being paranoid, reading into the situation. It’s a turn of phrase. My dad will kill me. A hyperbole, that’s all.

“Where did you last see the cat?” He asks.

They find it rolling around in a sandbox at the park. 

He walks the kid home and takes note of the address and the license plate of the car in the driveway.

🐾

The summer heat comes on fast and Diego is sweating through his turtleneck. He tugs at the collar. Maybe he should just go home, he’d spent the night tracking down leads, a boring but necessary aspect of vigilantism. It’s nearing four in the morning now and the caffeine is leaving his system anyway. Might as well end his patrol here.

Which is of course when a small dog comes out of nowhere to sniff at him.

“The fuck do you want?” He whines, too tired to bother sounding intimidating. The dog is small, some kind of chihuahua thing, tan and fluffy. It follows him for a block before Diego gives in and picks it up. 

“You’re lucky I’m tired,” he tells it. It licks his cheek. The tag on its collar reads COCO, 363 Quailhollow Drive. That’s on the other side of the city. “How did you get over here?” He asks. It licks him again. He’s about to turn around when his head twinges, warning him he either needs coffee or sleep lest he wants a migraine.

“Fuck.”

He takes it home. “Don’t shit in my bed,” he mumbles as he sags onto the couch. Eyelids too heavy to keep open. 

“So,” Dora says at five am, loudly placing her coffee cup on the table, startling Diego awake. He moans and curls into the couch cushions. “It’s all strays now? Not just cats?”

“Mmmmwha?”

“There’s a dog in Sink’s bed.”

Diego shrugs. “‘kay, sleep now, dog later.” Dora huffs so he’ll know she’s exasperated and then presses a kiss to the curve of his ear and leaves for work. 

He’s half asleep, but he thinks he hears her mutter, “savior of strays,” under her breath.

🐾

He is not the savior of strays. He sticks to cats. And if the occasional dog gets thrown into the mix, well, it hardly makes a difference.

🐾

He’s nursing an iced coffee while staking out a warehouse when he sees that blond kid he helped a couple of months ago coming out of said warehouse. He watches him and gets a sinking feeling in his stomach. No one is in this part of town at night unless they’re looking for trouble. He gets out of his car and crosses the street.

The kid is walking away from the warehouse with a slight limp in his gait. He doesn’t notice Diego following him. _Useless_ , Diego’s mind supplies automatically, a faint British accent ringing in his ears, _asking for it._ He pushes those thoughts aside, this is why he doesn’t like to be around kids, they bring out the worst in him.

The kid stumbles and turns to tuck away between two dark warehouses. 

Diego isn’t sure how he wants to approach the kid, so he resorts to his default and throws a knife. It pierces the kid’s t-shirt between his forearm and ribs, leaving him unscathed but pinning his shirt to the wall.

He walks up to him. “So. What’d they give you?” He knows the answer already.

“Oh, hi again. I th-th-thought you were the c-c-c-cat vigil-vigilante.”

Diego glares. “I can multitask. Let’s see,” he moves closer and the kid doesn’t try to stop him when he starts patting him down. He finds the 8-ball in the kid’s shoe. “Original,” he grunts and slips the bag into one of his harness pockets. 

When he looks back to the kid’s face he realizes he’s crying. Shit. “Hey, um,” he’s not used to his perps crying. 

Diego wonders if Klaus was ever like this, confused and scared when found with drugs. He tries to picture it but he can’t see Klaus as anything but comfortable or indifferent when faced with authority.

“I’m s-s-sorry. I-I-”

Diego cuts him off. “You’re what, fifteen?”

The kid shuffles a bit, tears slowing but still very literally pinned to the wall. His eyes flit up to meet Diego’s before immediately falling back to the ground.

“Fourteen.” Christ. Diego is sick. Sick of the gangs. Sick of the dealers. Sick of the drugs. The kid’s big green eyes are already dilated, Diego hates how familiar that is.

“I’m taking you home.” He pulls his knife free, grips the kid like he would an unruly alley cat and marches them towards his car.

“No!” The kid pulls away more forcefully than Diego thought he was capable of. The kid looks like he’s surprised with himself too. They stare at each other for a moment. Diego twists a knife between his fingers, a move that’s comforting in its familiarity and threatening to anyone watching. The kid sniffles, tears coming back in full force. “I c-c-can’t go-go ba-back.”

Diego eyes the kid carefully. “If I take you to a shelter, would you stay there tonight?”

He’s already bracing himself for an argument when the kid shrugs. “Okay.”

“There’s a youth shelter on 9th street,” he tells him. The kid nods, but Diego continues anyway. It’s routine at this point.

“They have a substance abuse program.”

“Oh.”

“You should go to their meetings.”

“O-okay.”

“They’re on Mondays and Wednesdays at 6:00.”

The kid nods. “Okay. I-I’ll go. Th-thank you.”

Diego squints at him in disbelief. “Get in my car. I’ll drive you.” Still, the kid obeys.

He feels weirdly relieved watching the kid walk through the shelter’s doors. But he’s definitely not going to analyze that.

🐾

It’s the Fourth of July and Diego is standing with Dora’s dad in the bustling Patch Residence backyard. He’s carefully watching everything the man does with the hamburgers on the barbecue in case he’s asked to take over, while simultaneously trying his best to act like he isn’t paying attention at all. 

Patties on, brown one side, flip, brown the other side, take off the grill. Diego might not know anything about backyard BBQ parties, but he can recognize a test from a mile away, and being able to grill hamburger patties seems like the ultimate suburban test of masculinity.

He sips his beer and nods along as Dora’s dad and Dora’s brother-in-law talk about escrows, whatever that is, he’s been too focused on figuring out the mechanics of grilling to really follow along.

He gets the urge to bolt, but crams it back down for the seventh time that day. Dora had been practically giddy when Diego agreed to come today. He cracks his knuckles in lieu of playing with a knife.

Across the yard, Dora is laughing with her sisters, someone’s baby is on her hip. She’s gorgeous in a blue dress and casual red flip flops. Her hair is falling down around her shoulders in curls that frame her flushed face and for a second she makes eye contact with him and winks.

Diego forgets to breathe.

🐾

No one cares. It’s not a surprise, but it is frustrating as all hell.

“It’s not that the police don’t care,” Dora had reminded him. “We just don’t have the manpower to investigate it right now. There isn’t any solid proof that anything is even going on.”

Diego had scoffed and left the apartment. He can get proof.

Which is how Diego Hargreeves, a deadly crime fighting superhero, failed cop, and mediocre boyfriend, finds himself in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city shoving cages full of cats into the van he “borrowed”.

“Don’t worry,” he whispers to an especially thin cat. “It’s almost over.” It mewls pathetically in response. Diego doesn’t understand humanity and for once, he doesn’t think it’s because of his upbringing.

All year, he’s been saving cats. And so many of the cats he saves are strays, poor unwanted things he has to bring to the shelter and hope they find a home. 

He steps over the bleeding guy on the floor to grab another cage full of scraggly cats. 

So, if there are so many cats, a surplus really, who need homes, why on earth are there people who feel the need to mass-produce them? To keep too many cats in too few, too small cages. To force them to live with no love. To deny them normal, regular lives by keeping them isolated and scared. 

He accidentally steps on the guy's face as he grabs another cage. Oops.

A kitten mill, Dora had called it when Diego had told her about the place he’d heard about. Diego had known he’d found the right place from the sheer smell of it. These cats were in worse shape than most of the strays Diego found on the street. 

The van is completely jam-packed with cats from floor to ceiling, and there’s still one cage left so Diego scoops the three kittens out and sets them in his lap.

He calls the police station to give an anonymous tip about the unconscious guy on the ground before driving to the nearest animal clinic.

🐾

Diego is prodding at his cheekbone, trying to figure out if that armed robber he had zip tied to the bike rack had broken it and Sink is, of course, trotting along beside him, _the vulture_. They pass the seedy nightclub that the police have been investigating because of seven missing persons reports (what the police don’t understand is why there haven’t been any more disappearances, and Diego isn’t about to tell them what he did to that sick son of a bitch.) The music inside is spilling out the door and Diego can feel the sidewalk pulsing to the beat. 

Between the pain and the music, Diego doesn’t notice someone approaching him until a hand lands on his shoulder and another brushes against his back pocket. He immediately grabs the hand and flips the person. Sink stays by his feet, hackles raised.

“Ffffffffuck. Di-e-go.” Klaus groans and Diego swears under his breath. He helps his brother up.

“Where’ve you been?” Diego had been looking for him for months, but Klaus was more than capable of not being found if he didn’t want to be.

“Away.” Klaus stretches and winces dramatically, he’s wearing a strapless black dress with an easy confidence that Diego has always been jealous of.

“Rehab?” Klaus looks good, he’s high, sure, that goes without saying. But he’s not as skinny as he was the last time Diego saw him. His cheeks are full and his skin has a bit of a tan. He’s healthy.

“Nah. The Academy for a bit.”

Diego doesn’t say anything. Unsure if he wants to call Klaus a traitor for going back or hug him. 

Klaus shifts uncomfortably as Diego just stares at him. “You were right. It was too cold to stay out. And, hey!” He snaps and grins, filling the space with meaningless noise. “I renovated! Yeah. Tore down a wall so now I have more space. It’s pretty sick. And! I saw Luther! He’s pretty lonely. Still going on missions, _of course_.” Klaus waves his hand and rolls his eyes. 

Diego blinks at him. “I know Luther goes on missions, it’s in the news. What do you mean you _tore down a wall_?”

“Is it really? Ben’s always saying I need to read more. Hmm.” His eyes dart away as he zones out. Diego huffs and snaps his fingers in Klaus’ face. 

“You tore down a wall? _My_ wall?” Not that he cares. He’s not ever going back to that place.

“No, no, no,” Klaus assures him, refocusing. “I wouldn’t do that! I took down Vanya’s, her room has such _nice_ bricks.”

“Oh. And Dad was cool with that?”

“Nope.” Klaus pops his p. “He kicked me out. Joke’s on him, I had been trying to leave for weeks. Pogo and Mom are really good at distracting you, you know? They kept me busy. It was getting pretty weird though, very _Cuckoo’s Nest_ , qu-ite disturbing.” Diego tunes him out as he starts rambling about the horrors of chores and pancakes. 

But where Diego is content to idly watch his brother gesticulate wildly as he tells his heavily embellished tale, Sink is not. The cat decides enough is enough and hisses a warning for Klaus to scram. 

He kicks at him slightly. “Behave.” When he looks back up Klaus isn’t telling the story anymore. Instead, he’s staring at Diego like he’s an alien or something.

“ _Mein Gott_ , you get weirder every time we bump into each other.”

 _“I_ get weirder?” Diego chokes in surprise, “You’re wearing cherry red thigh-high boots.”

“Well, first, they’re _candy red_. And second, boots are not weirder than having a cat sidekick.” He laughs like he’s said something clever before turning suddenly to look at the empty space beside him. “No, a ghost sidekick is not as weird as a cat sidekick!” 

Sink, utterly unimpressed, decides to swipe at him.

Klaus yelps. “Goddammit, Diego! Control your beast!”

Diego decides it’s better to leave than explain that, no, he cannot control this very small creature. He grabs his wallet back from Klaus’ ill-concealed garter as he goes, but exaggeratedly “drops” twenty bucks before crossing the street.

🐾

Summer is winding down and Diego isn’t really sure how many cats he’s saved at this point, but if he had to guess, it would be in the triple digits. He’s also stopped trying to find his regular socks and accepted a life of cat-patterned undergarments. 

🐾

Diego knows something is wrong.

He’s locking the apartment door, gym bag over his shoulder, on his way to workout at the grungy boxing gym he’d discovered a month ago, when Sink sidles up beside him.

They stare at each other. Diego frowns, “what’s up, man?” Sink sits, like he’s waiting. Diego looks up, expecting a piano to fall on him or some guy to run at him with an ax. Sink only shows up when he’s hurt. And as far as Diego knows, he’s absolutely fine. He grabs a knife and then feels stupid.

“He’s a cat,” he mutters to himself, “not an omen.” But still, Diego is stuck where he’s standing, Sink is waiting, so maybe Diego should be too?

They don’t have to wait long. Twenty seconds later, his phone rings.

Diego isn’t good at seeing things from other peoples’ perspectives. He knows this because Dora has told him so many times.

So he’s not quite emotionally ready to see Dora in the hospital. And for the first time he thinks he gets why she’s always so upset when he gets hurt.

He finds her on a temporary bed in the ER, thin blue curtains closed around her to give the suggestion of privacy. Her shirt is pulled down to reveal her shoulder, the bright white bandage in contrast with her beautiful skin. She tells him before he has to ask. “It’s just a graze. The guy got lucky.” But her hair is falling out of its ponytail and blood is spattered across her shirt and pants. Her exhaustion makes her look small, defenseless.

Diego feels the wave of anxiety he’s been holding off suddenly crash against him. A hummingbird is thrashing around in his chest and for a fleeting second he wishes his mom was there. He crosses the distance between them, overcome with the need to touch. To feel her, warm and alive, in his hands. He holds her face, thumbs caressing her cheeks and lets his forehead rest against her’s.

He’s so sick. So tired. It’s wrong to see her like this. Diego is the one who gets hurt. He grew up getting hurt and shaking it off. But Dora didn’t and Diego would happily take every bullet with her name on it if it means she never has to get shot again.

He breathes her in. Grateful for whatever cosmic power let the bullet miss.

When Diego gets Dora in his car ( _safe_ his mind screams, _safe in my car_ ), he’s not all that surprised to see Sink sitting in the backseat. He wasn’t in the car when Diego parked and he didn’t leave any windows open, but Sink has always been a sneaky motherfucker.

Diego holds Dora’s hand as he drives and they’re just pulling out of the parking lot when she falls asleep. Silently, Sink jumps into the front bench and curls up against Dora’s hip.

“Thanks for the warning, man.” Diego whispers.

Sink hisses back quietly.

🐾

When they get home, Diego helps Dora change into sweatpants and the gaudy yet undeniably comfortable Cat Mom sweater they’ve been sharing.

They watch Gilmore Girls on one end of the couch and Sink watches them from the other end.

🐾

The leaves are changing when Diego finally admits to himself that as far as coping mechanisms go, this one is weird. But there’s nothing more soothing after a stressful day, than visiting his cats at the shelter. Or walking by a yard where the dogs already know him. Or driving by the youth shelter at 5:56 to watch the kid stumble up the steps in time for his meeting. Is it a bit stalker-y?

“Yes.” Dora tells him from the passenger seat. “This is creepy. And we’re going to be late to trivia night.” But then she leans over and plants a kiss on his scar. So, yeah, he keeps track of the creatures he helps. It’s not a big deal.

🐾

Diego’s tying his cape when Dora’s hands cover his eyes. He can feel her pressed up against his back, her warm lips centimeters from his ear. The warning bells go off in his head, _vulnerable_ his dad’s voice hisses in his ear. But he forces himself to relax and lean into her. This is a game they’ve played before.

“You forgot about the anniversary.” 

Diego freezes. This isn’t part of the game.

“What?” He thinks hard. An anniversary? Of what? Dating? Moving in together? Dora getting her job? None of those fit. He shifts out of her grasp and whirls around. He needs to see her, gauge her reaction. Is she pissed? Sad? Fuck, fuck, fu-

She’s smiling.

Diego is so confused. Dora smirks at whatever face he’s making and decides to cut him some slack.

“Last week was the anniversary of Chuck finding you with your arm down a storm drain. Happy one year of saving cats.” A surprised laugh escapes his lips, and he’s suddenly very glad he never told her about the white cat he saved before that fat orange one. His girlfriend is so weird. He moves back in and presses against her, his hands skimming her leather-clad hips.

“Nuh-uh. We’re not going to skip out on the party.” She steps away and throws his mask at him.

“Halloween is dumb. We can have way more fun here.”

She levels him with the ever familiar Look. “Diego, I love you. But I didn’t spend this much money on costumes just to stay home. C’mon, Chuck’s waiting for us.”

“You’re the one that decided it was a good idea to spend two hundred dollars on Batman and Catwoman costumes. Not me.” He grumbles but slips the silly Batman mask on and follows a few paces behind her to the car.

She really does look amazing in leather.

The party is in full swing when they get there.

“Hey, it’s the Cat Vigilante!” Beaman shouts when he sees Diego walk in. There's a drink in his hand and Diego can tell it isn't his first.

Diego rolls his eyes, about to tell him to fuck off when Dora laughs and corrects him. “No, no! Haven’t you heard? He’s the _Stray Savior,_ now.”

“Aw, he widened his parameters.”

“Expanded his horizons.”

“Is there a limit to his heroism?”

“He’ll go for anything.”

“See, I’ve heard that. But I didn’t realize it applied to his vigilantism as well.” Beaman and Dora chuckle and grin smugly at him. Assholes.

“You guys suck.” He crosses his arms but can’t quite stop smiling either. 

Unbeknownst by the party guests, a serious clash between evil and justice is taking place right outside.

“Hisssss.” The Cat Vigilante tells the three large alleycats circling him. “Hiss hiss hiss.” He may be smaller, but the scars he proudly wears shimmer in the moonlight, warning the bigger cats of his history. They eye him with a mix of trepidation and amusement. They don’t take him seriously. He’ll show them. 

The trembling kitten they had been pushing around watches them posture. He can smell her fear, it makes his blood boil. Sink yowls and charges forward, claws out, swiping for the closest cat’s eye. 

He learned from the best.

**Author's Note:**

> "He sticks to cats. And if the occasional dog gets thrown into the mix, well, it hardly makes a difference."
> 
> ok, replace cats with women and dog with man and we get a good definition of Diego's sexuality :-)


End file.
